Sibley's Birding Basics and other books

[ECD1211]

I just wanted to post a recommendation for the book Sibley's Birding Basics -- especially for fledgling birders like me. I ordered this book from Amazon.com recently (less than $11) and it is a very useful introduction to birding with an emphasis on the kinds of things a birder should focus on to make good identifications.

A few other books I've purchased that might also be useful to beginners:

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth Edition -- this is the guide I use at home. I bought my first one in 1983 and finally updated it to the latest edition recently.

National Geographic Complete Birds of North America -- a nice, big book that complements the NG field guide with more detail and illustrations. I use this book to study up on birds I've seen in the field or to familiarize myself with birds I'm hoping to spot.

The Sibley Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern North America -- this is the book I carry with me in the field; it's a bit smaller than the National Geographic guide and much more portable than the standard Sibley's guide (which is still on my list of books to buy).

Birds of Texas Field Guide (by Stan Tekiela) -- this is a nice little book that includes most of the birds one is likely to see in Texas. It's very portable (fits easily in a pocket) and has a photo of the bird on the left-hand page and a description/range map on the right. The birds are sorted by predominant color and you can quickly flip through the pictures to find birds quickly. They carry this book in local Barnes & Noble stores.

National Audubon Society North America Bird Feeder Guide -- I bought this on an impulse at Barnes & Noble and it's a great book. It includes some basic information on feeding and housing backyard birds, some birding basics, and profiles of selected common birds. This is a nice general resource book.

[betsy]

Another good book for fledgling birders is Pete Dunne on Birdwatching: The How-to, Where-to and When-to of Birding. It covers different ground than the Sibley book -- things like choosing binoculars and field guides, backyard birding, learning to see critically, resources for birders, etc., etc., etc.

Pete Dunne has a new book out called Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion, which is devoted to the craft of field identification, giving tips on jizz and so forth for each of the North American species.

If you want to know a little more about the species you see, including diet, reproductive behavior (courtship, where they nest, who builds it, how many eggs are laid and what they look like, who incubates them, who feeds & cares for the nestlings), etc., you can get a half page per species in The Birder's Handbook by Ehrlich, Dobkin & Wheye, along with numerous essays about different aspects of birds.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is another book that will take you beyond mere identification. It discusses families of birds, so all the thrushes, for example, will be covered in a special chapter on the thrush family. There are some 100 pages of information about the world of birds in general at the front. Not so long after it came out, a very experienced birder I know told me he was in the habit of taking this book to bed with him each night to read a chapter and said he'd learned new things from it.

Then eventually you may want to add Kenn Kaufman's Advanced Birding (in the Peterson series) to your library. It addresses the difficult IDs, with far more detail than you'll get in any field guide.

Books for the more advanced (or just more curious) birder's bookshelf will be addressed at another time, perhaps in a different thread (unless Perry or someone else leaps in right away).

[planobirder]

There is also The Complete Birder by Jack Connor. Ive found this at Half-Price Books stores (especially the one @ Northwest Hwy) in the area. This is a good book. Also, Ken Kaufman's Lives of North American Birds is good life history info. Also, The Birdwatcher's Companion is THE encyclopedia on birding. Ive forgotten the authors. And there is Hawks in Flight by Dunne, Sutton and Sibley. The modern version of this old title is Hawks From Every Angle by Jerry Ligouri. Ive seen all these titles at the local Half-Price Books stores except the last one.

[betsy]

Good books all, Planobirder. The author of the superb Birdwatcher's Companion is Christopher Leahy. One of my favorites.

[planobirder]

I found a lone copy of Gulls:2nd Edition by P.J. Grant at the Plano Half-Price Books for $10.00 today!!! I saw it on the shelf, and i grabbed it so fast, and i was like...oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! this is a rare bird book! Ill have to check how much the used copies are @ Amazon.com. I am still amazed I found this. :D

there is 1 used copy on Amazon for 99.99:eek:

it was a divine orchestration, thats all it could have been! :)

[turtleman]

The Birder's Handbook - A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds by Ehrlich, Dobkin and Wheye.

This is a 1-3/4" thick, 785-page book (paperback) I refer to constantly which contains all the birds of North America with summaries of their nest locations, nest type, diet, foraging techniques, eggs, breeding system, chick development and other interesting information. Half of the book is devoted to hundreds of bird facts which would be difficult to find elswhere in one place. The Bibliography is 62 pages long.

The added attraction to the book is that it only cost $14.95 when I bought it about 15 years ago